


Jasmine Musk

by g4t1t0



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Gen, M/M, Running Away, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/g4t1t0/pseuds/g4t1t0
Summary: As usual, he drinks his coffee black, favoring how the bitter scent mixes with the jasmine and vetiver left on his nose.





	Jasmine Musk

**Author's Note:**

> can not stress the tw for self harm it doesnt get that graphic but just take care and b careful
> 
> no real spoilers for tlj its all pretty vague
> 
> ben n poe are best friends n the romance between hugs and kyle isnt the main part of this its mostly about ben growing up and youu know i just never write aus out of canon divergence so here we go get readty for some SAD BEN and hux is there in pt 2 being a Rude bitch but hey arent we all
> 
> more tags will be added w the second chapter etc
> 
> not betad like usual ! so enjoy my bad syntax and run on sentences as god intended!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> comments are appreciated sorry in advanced

Ben rubs the blooming blue and purple spot on his hip. It’s the perfect size for him to press his thumb deep into it, creating a small spark of pain below the surface.

He knows he’s growing again, filling out into his once comically gangling bone structure, which would be awesome if it didn’t hurt so god damn much. He’s always walking into the fucking kitchen table, or stubbing his little toe on door frames (how hasn't it shattered yet?). He’s just not used to how... big he’s gotten.

The growing pains are just as unbearable as his clumsiness. His knees ache. His shoulders ache. He notices a new ache in between his ears too, but that’s an easier one to get rid of. 

Most of the the time, at least.

Sometimes it’s so powerful he can’t do anything but lay in bed and. Well.

It’s scares Ben how he can’t stop himself from crying once he starts. It scares him how powerful that ache can get.

The sharp pain from his fingers digging into his bruise brings him back, fast and effectively. It’s a weird habit, no one’s really picked up on it yet, but it’s helped him come back, helped soothe his temper, helped punish him when no one else would. It’s a miracle, he thinks, that pain can at least be useful like this. At least it can serve a purpose this way.

He stands up from his bed, makes a poor attempt of tidying it, and pulls on a jacket. The jacket is smaller, thou it’s barely a year old, and it stretches and strains over his arms. His arms, which have begun rounding out, shaping into something strong, weapon-like. A smile crosses Ben’s lips at the thought. What’s cooler than that?

He imagines himself pile-driving his best friend. Poe would think that’s cool, right?

When he leaves his room, he takes in the heavy aroma of coffee- Dark roast, naturally. His dad won’t drink anything else in the morning.

As he creeps towards the kitchen, he stills his breath and listens in on his parents.

They always speak in such hushed tones and it makes Ben nervous. Sometimes it’s about work, and sometimes it’s about Ben. He closes his eyes and listens hard.

He’s relieved when he hears them talking about work.

Maybe relieved isn’t the right word. Resigned maybe. But it’s better than the alternative, it’s better than pity.

He steels himself and walks into the kitchen, going straight to the coffee maker. When he sees a six foot tall roadblock in the way, he charts a different route, though the alternative is occupied by enemy forces as well. There’s still time to retreat before they notice him, he can still return to base before-

“You doing okay there, kid?”

Ben looks at his father, then to his mother, then back to his dad. It shouldn’t be this hard to talk to your Literal Fucking Parents. And yet.

He searches through the catalogue of stock responses he has, has to quick because he’s sure he looks like an idiot just standing there, but nothing’s coming to mind. So he goes with that.

Gritting his teeth, he walks towards his mother, slips by her, and ignores the question.

“Ben,” He feels a hand on his shoulder and he frowns. “Is everything alright this morning?”

His mother is so close he can smell her perfume- clean, floral, barely musky- and for the most fleeting of moments, he’s younger. It’s last year, he’s 13 and in the passengers seat of his mom’s car. He didn’t hurt then. Feelings were just feelings.

Something changed.

“Everything’s alright,” He mimics, though the words come out harsh, with an edge.

It’s quiet again, and he can feel his parents looking at each other, and while it makes hims sick, drives him crazy how much they just care without caring, he can handle silence.

He turns and leaves the kitchen, ignoring any words his parents call after him.

As usual, he drinks his coffee black, favoring how the bitter scent mixes with the jasmine and vetiver left on his nose.

-

A year passes, though it barely feels like it. Time rolls by in such a unnatural way now, Ben learns to ignore it.

When the weather grows hot, then cold again, it's only the buzz of his phone to remind him-

[happy birthday :-) are u having a party today?]

He blinks at his phone screen, the brightness only magnifying a growing migraine. Poe. Birthday.

[ive been busy], Ben responds. That's it, right? He didn't forget on purpose, didn't forget to ease the pain of being forgotten by someone else.

He doesn't tell Poe his parents didn't wish him a happy birthday that morning before work. A detail like that isn't important.

When Poe texts him again, tells Ben he's riding his bike over, that familiar ache becomes something overwhelming. He locks the front door and runs into the kitchen. Something is growing inside of him, eating him, scaring him. His surroundings are so unbearably mundane, though it feels as if there's a film over it all, making it foggy, damp, dull. He feels weak in more ways than one. There's no discipline in this, no chance to reach out and control it like Uncle Luke had once taught him. That powerful sorrow grows faster, swallows him up entirely when he realizes how weak he really is. He feels small. He feels vulnerable. 

In response, he feels rage.

Ben slams his fist through a wall, and the immediate regret and anxiety has him driving his fist hard into his own gut. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Everything is silent, or muffled, so he doesn't know he's screaming and can't even begin to understand what he's saying. He barely understands it when he feels two arms wrap around him, but it's enough to still him almost instantaneously. With claws like a wild animal, and fear in his eyes to match, Ben pulls Poe closer and breathes him in.

He must look so pathetic, clinging to the front of Poe's shirt, crying into his chest so hard he starts gagging.

Ben struggles to find words and scrambles for anything to say. After 45 seconds of simply stuttering out half sentences, Ben allows himself to be soothed by Poe's hand on his back.

“It's okay, buddy. You're okay. I got you.”

-

Ben has seen mental hospitals on TV. Behavioral health hospitals, he reminds himself. 

Seeing them on the inside for the first time, he decides he hates them. They are oppressive and evil and everything wrong with western medicine. 

When he tells this to his father during a family therapy session, Han laughs and says something to the effect of, “you've been around Luke too much”.

It's ridiculously patronizing, and he tells Han that as well.

Do people stop taking you seriously once they know you're crazy? Once they know you're sick?

Ben stops saying things to his dad.

-

Uncle Luke comes to visit Ben, and it's the single good thing he can look forward to for those two pathetic weeks.

Luke tells him his old bedtime stories, weaving complex tales of the great knight Kylo Ren. Ben draws while Luke tells him of Ren destroying dragons, saving villages, returning home to his family. These are always Ben's favorites- Kylo is just like him, but he is a hero where Ben is a coward.

Kylo Ren would never end up in a mental hospital.

-

He tries to be a better son, he really does. He's always trying so fucking hard to be better, to be worth something. But there is no trying, or some bullshit Luke once told him.

At some point, he stops trying.

-

 

Ben is 17 when he hits someone the first time.

At the time, he maintains it's an accident, a reflex, a frightened animal lashing out.

He feels bad, he feels guilty, but he feels something else. Something familiar, something new.

After his great hospital escape (he stopped speaking to the doctors and was discharged), his one on one meditation sessions with Uncle Luke (he was never able to stay that quiet on the inside, ended up breaking something, naturally), and a short stint with medication (Leia used the words “prescription medication abuse”), Ben resigned himself to it. He was chronically angry, and even worse, he was obsessively sad. 

(Sad, angry, these words are never powerful enough, he thinks. Then again, even he knows he has a tendency to be melodramatic.)

He dealt with it the only way he really knew how- by pressing his fingers into bruises, digging his nails into scrapes. It was to be expected when the ministrations escalated.

The feeling of being so in control of that pain, and so able to create that suffering on his own- It was all he needed. All he needed was control. 

Kylo was always in control.

Ben was always in control.

Ben is 17 when he hits Han Solo for the first time, and it is a release unlike any other. It is control, it is power.

-

The swarm of emotion had been breeding in him all day. Rage, teeming like maggots, crawl and writhe under his skin. The sensation isn't abnormal, though- some days are just worse than others. Ben's personal purgatory was never knowing what would finally push him to that edge. With that bloated feeling ever present under his skin, he manages to calm himself enough to wash dishes. His mind is other places, it always is, and he barely registers the glass falling out of his hands to the floor. The sound of shattering glass is enough to shake him from his dreaming, and it makes him uncomfortable present.

With that push, the reminder of failure, he finds himself grabbing another glass. He hits it on the corner of the kitchen island, breaking it in his hands. 

He can't stop. He brakes another glass, then a plate, and by that time, his mother is downstairs, shouting, crying. He couldn’t hear her, not clearly. Was he underwater?

Blood pools in his palms, and his wild gaze darts around the room. He had been caught having a tantrum, and he knows he'll get in trouble for it. The thought injects fear into his blood and he's pushed fully off the edge. The next few minutes are red, his vision covered with bloody sheet lighting. 

When the rushing sound in his ears clears up enough, he can hear his father, can hear him... saying something, though he can't distinguish what. Ben feels his father's warms hands on his shoulders, stilling him, or trying to.

He must have said something bad.

Otherwise Ben wouldn’t have pulled out of his grip, right? He wouldn’t have landed a bizarrely practiced jab on the side of Han’s face. He would never hurt Han unless he needed to...

Han. His dad. They were two different people at this point.

Ben and Kylo are two different people, too.

The shell shocked look on Han’s face builds up something in Kylo, but destroys something far more important in Ben. He turns and runs before the urge to honest-to-god kill his father grows, wraps in his intestines, chokes him out.

-

After a family conversation that Kylo- Ben- isn't entirely present for, Leia and Han make arrangements for him to move in with Luke. It's not surprising in the least. He's grown to big for this house, he's become too much for his parents to control. So they're getting rid of him.

If he didn't feel alone before he does now.

He did this to himself.

-

Kylo lives with Luke for a little over a year before it happens. He doesn't want to talk about it. He never does.

-

It's only a few weeks after Kylo leaves Luke, that he meets someone to take his place.

Kylo has a job, was hired a few months ago before he ran away.

Ran away? He's an adult. He's wise beyond his years, too, Luke told him that. He didn't run away. He isn't a coward.

His shirt read SECURITY in bold, white letters. It’s a title he holds close, it’s something he struggles to maintain.

The self mutilation doesn’t stop. If anything, it’s gotten worse with no one checking in on him. Not that they wouldn’t. He knows his parents still loved him. Right? He knows he’s the one who pushed them away. Right?

Kylo has no time to brood at work. He has to stay awake, has to stay on Earth, has to watch people like a hawk. He's good at reading people, and better at intimidating them. 

It’s how he meets an older gentleman, clean shaven, horribly disfigured, and smelling offensively strong of vetiver and musk.

The gentleman is hanging around the front of the store and occasionally, or rather, obsessively, glances in Kylo's direction. The action naturally rouses Kylo's suspicion, so he casually makes his way to the gentleman. He notices several other men, dressed just as nicely. When he comes face to face with the older gentleman, he notices how... tall he is. Taller than Kylo himself.

Where he normally asks, 'Need any help,' 'Finding everything alright,' he falters completely and stands there staring slightly up with his mouth agape.

The man before Kylo introduces himself, shakes his hand. Kylo's hand is weak in the gentleman's firm and cold grip.

He says something about a job offer, and I see something very special in you, and I've had my eye on you for quiet a while, and you’re a strong young man, I wonder why you’ve settled in such a small place.

“If you grow out of it,” He hands Kylo a card.

It’s how he meets Snoke.

—

It’s hot in this towm. He’s lived here his entire life and it never once bothered him.

He remembers summers with Luke and getting up early to avoid the heat for their morning runs. He remembers how freckles would bloom under his eyes when he spent a day at the lake. He remembers equating the heat with freedom from his house, and his parents. A warm day always meant he was sent outside, to roam the town on his bike with Poe.

Now, it’s oppressive and unbearable. A reminder of where he is and how he's stuck.

-

Kylo scavenges samples of Oud Wood from department stores. Regrettably, drops $100 on a dupe of it.

It’s not the same. Of course it isn’t the same. There’s no such thing as a Tom Ford dupe- his mother taught him that.

He studies the card in his hands, notes the metallic embossing on it. It disappears at a certain angle.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to disappear?

**Author's Note:**

> tumbler @h3rm4n0 or @st4rw4r2 talk to me abt kylo ren


End file.
